Demonstrate: Friday 28 July, 17:30 to 18:30, outside the Israeli embassy in London (on High St Kensington, opposite the junction with Kensington Palace Gardens).
Israel out of the Occupied Territories! Two Nations, Two States! Let the Palestinians have their own independent state, alongside Israel! Download leaflet.
Once again senseless small-scale provocative guerrilla action by the militias of Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel has triggered an enormously disproportionate response. In Gaza and in Lebanon, Israel has deployed brutal military strikes with considerable civilian casualties.
The Israeli government acts as if it wants to make any agreed settlement impossible. It hopes to get through force what it could not get through negotiations: the annexation of a sizable part of the territory it captured in the war provoked by Egypt and others in 1967, and the reduction of any future "Palestinian state" to a collection of disjointed territories.
The Israeli government is attempting to exploit the opportunity given to it by Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections. The Israeli escalation started soon after Hamas had semi-recognised Israel, backed down in face of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's proposal to call a referendum in the Occupied Territories on the recognition of Israel and a "two-states" policy. Did the Israeli government fear that Abbas's success would put it under pressure to negotiate?
The Israeli government wants to act unilaterally to reduce any "Palestinian state" to a series of patches of land surrounded by Israeli military positions - to make impossible an independent Palestinian state. Conversely, Hamas could not have doubted the reaction it would provoke by the capture of an Israeli soldier. But Hamas would rather play with the lives of Palestinian people than pursue the achievement of a Palestinian state. Why? Hamas’s explicit long-term aim is to destroy Israel and establish an Islamic State run under sharia law. This reactionary and fantastic aim, if acted upon with sufficient power, would mean genocide on Israeli Jews.
Hezbollah, the Islamist movement in Lebanon, came to the support of the diehards in Hamas by kidnapping Israeli soldiers! Once again the Israeli government responded with a hugely disproportionate assault on Lebanon, with large and predictable civilian casualties among the Lebanese population in general.
The victims of this offensive have been the people of Lebanon and Gaza; working-class Israelis; and the people of the occupied West Bank, who see the risk of an imposed Israeli carve-up of their territory increased.
Syria and Iran bang the drums in support of Hezbollah and expose themselves as the regional imperialists they are. But the decisive power here to destroy, or to keep alive, possibilities of peace, lies with the Israeli government.
We support the peace movement in Israel and its demonstrations against this new war. We support the secular, democratic forces in the Occupied Territories and in Lebanon who resist the Israeli assaults in the name of a settlement which would allow every nation in the region - Palestinian Arabs as well as Israeli Jews - the right to self-determination in peace.
End the attacks on Gaza and Lebanon! No reoccupation of southern Lebanon! For a free and independent Palestinian state alongside Israel!
Comments
Poor show?
In reply to These are admirable sentiments..... by losttango
1. There is a junction between Kensington Place and High St Kensington. We've been there dozens of times, were there last Friday, will be there next Friday. There does appear to be another Kensington Place, further away, but this one (a small alley not on some A-Zs) is just opposite Kensington Palace Gardens.
2. It is not possible to demonstrate in Kensington Palace Gardens itself because of the heavy police protection of the Israeli embassy. (And in any case if we were there, none of the public could see us).
So - come next Friday!
These are admirable sentiments.....
....and I was sufficiently moved to go along to the demonstration, however:-
1. There is no junction between Kensington Place and High Street Kensington, in fact they are about half a mile apart.
2. The Israeli Embassy is actually in Kensington Palace Gardens
3. I went to the Embassy at 5.30 on Friday and there was no demonstration in evidence.
I had no option but to go on "Stop The War"s demo on Saturday instead and listen to George Galloway announcing that he was "glorifying" Hezbollah and Nasrallah, at which point I left.
A poor show all round, I think.